Predator: Island of Cannibals
by I-Write-What-I-Want-To
Summary: There was only one experience in the presence of my sire that changed my views and caused me to truly ponder what defines honor, law, and the hunt. More importantly, I had to contemplate what warrants an act of mercy. I am Cir'idi. I should have died on this island.
1. Relentless Water

The worst way to wake is to open your eyes to the sound of your hull scraping along the hostile atmosphere of an unknown world. I hadn't even the faintest idea of where I was. All I knew was that I would soon die.

As I sprang from my sleeping chambers into the corridor to make my way toward the helm, the entire ship jolted and lurched unexpectedly. The functions of the ship which created a hammock of artificial gravity fought with the much greater pull of the planet and I rolled end over end down the hall. I flung by the battling forces of the ship and the world below in all directions but the one I wanted to go. The helm was twice as far now, not that I cared about the greater distance in that instant when my body met the end of the corridor and the closed passage into the kehrite. The force of impact was sufficient to create a concave dent in the door and to break bones. Held fast to the dead end by the velocity which my vessel moved toward catastrophe I scrabbled at my side and howled in anger as well as pain. What madness was this!? The ship was older, a ritual vessel, but not faulty to a degree of such that would result in this!

At the helm I could right the the ship and determine what had gone airy. Urgency filled my thoughts as the turbulence began to even into a smooth drop. I had no time. I would never make it to the control array before the ship and I with it met our final rest.

Death. I could practically smell it as my craft fell from the skies. I expected the end of my path to come instantly, in flames or perhaps followed by an explosion, but there was a moment of weightlessness and then my world shook violently. I fell from my place at the hall's end, twisting in the chaotic flight toward the open doorway of the helm. I saw the seats and the sensor array very briefly and very closely before a blanket of void encircled me.

I may have been unconscious for some time, I do not know how long. When I woke I saw and heard very little as my senses were quite dull. There was the flashing heat of sparks dancing from the exposed wire and circuit boards under me. There was also this dull roar inside my head, like gushing water. But it _was_ indeed water that overwhelmed my ears. The hull had been breached upon decent through the atmosphere or possibly during the crash. The lower deck was filling up rapidly. I had fallen into a body of water? An ocean perhaps? I felt the cold of the water as it infiltrated the upper deck and spilled forth into the place where I lay dazed and disoriented. The shock of its frigid touch roused me with a start. The ship had crashed, but I did not die on impact. Instead I was going to drown inside my own vessel!

Escape was not overly difficult what with the fear of drowning to add additional urgency to the effort. The ship had plummeted face first into the great sea around me which seemed to writhe and roil as the sinking vessel created vortexes and churning water around it.

I was glad that I always slept in my awu'asa the night before a planned to hunt in order to acclimate to the feel and additional weight but this place was certainly not the oceanless destination I had plotted a course toward the cycle before. I had crashed some time near the middle of my sleep time. Maybe I was in a very near star system but not where I had wanted to go. At least the communications device upon my left wrist could send a signal for assistance to the flotilla.

That was just what I had begun to do as I stood upon the ass half of the ship as it continued to sink. I had perhaps a half hour before I'd need to abandon it and swim for shore, which was thankfully within sight. Too bad the vessel did not seem to want reprieve from the murky depths as my message may have brought had I gotten the chance to transmit it. The ship's residual buoyancy; a result of trapped pockets of gaseous atmosphere which I'd once used to breath caused the balance within to shift and the still floating mass to roll over. I was tossed toward the left flank of the ship as it breached briefly and I tried to get a claw hold in before slipping down the belly of the craft as it continued to roll over in the ocean. Into the water I went unceremoniously and ass first.

Perhaps a several minutes later I stood ankle deep in the sand of the coast line watching my home for the last half of this season sink into the black depths. I had my awu'asa, my ki'cti-pa and the kit for injuries but not much else.

My head was sore, more than just a rib was broken I was certain. To add unto the steadily worsening situation, any other equipment I had on my person was mangled thanks to the current washing me into sheer cliff over and over before I managed to find proper footing in order to haul myself out onto the adjacent sandy shore.

I was boned. Pauk. Nothing but the basest mechanical tools worked. My wrist communicator was smashed, sivk'va-tai offline, helm dysfunctional. All that was left after that was... The whole ship vanishing under the crashing waves as I looked on.

I had to sit, ignore my burning side and just breathe. The air was thin but tolerable. I could survive for a while so long as I avoided straining existing wounds and over exerting. Gods I was pathetic, sitting there knowing that I had no means out and no way to call home.

Once I had caught my breath I'd tried to reach my ship but the surf; it was far too intense even for me, a blooded warrior. I was smashed, tossed, shaken and sloshed about in the fierce waves yet again. This must have been the result of turbulent weather as no ocean I'd ever encountered before was so ruthless or unpredictable. I did reach the vessel on merit of determination alone however it was slowly sinking into the muck of the ocean floor. I'd learn later that the tides were unusually high on that day I had crashed and that this spot was in purity a shallow lagoon. I should never have left the ship, I should have tried to bring systems back online and rescue it from its doom. I realized that far too late.

I was nearly swallowed by the clay as I searched for the entrance hatch. If I could just get it to open- Too late, out of breath.

I surfaced only to be slammed and dazed by yet another swell, I had not even the time to take a full breath before being swept under and pulled by the force over jagged sea rock. I do admit that I may have cried out, but I cannot be certain.

When I reached the shore for the second time I was sure that all hope had been lost, also sure that I would bleed to death if I did not find a suitable place to lick my wounds. I held onto my thighs where they were carved only momentarily. I decided then to walk and find that quiet place to attend to my injuries.

I soon found a cave along the cliffs. It was there that I staunched the flow of thwei seeping from the open gashes with lengths of excess material from my breech cloths and trappings. I tied them tightly around the gnarled flesh. I needed to save what I could from my kit; Paya knows how long I could be stranded here... '_Before settling on ending my sorry, disgraceful self'_ I thought as I used only a simple injection to ward off any chance of infection.

With my well being attended to for now I could see to the needs of the equipment that I had managed to save from total destruction. I only needed to tweak my helm a little to get it working on an alternate power supply within the item itself for emergencies. My wrist communicator was pretty much a lost cause, but the other function of this piece of equipment could still work. The display icons may never light up warmly again, but I found that just one still worked when touched so that I could cloak my countenance and make my image fade away from any there to look, and there were none at the moment.

Still, I must be careful until I could repair the solar unit which would charge all energy stores within my awu'asa, until then everything would have to pull energy from the meager supply located within that helm of mine. I would need to be frugal with use of such things.

I'd done as much as I could expect of myself on an empty gut, little sleep and with a pounding head. Slumber called to me, offering her bosom of comfort. I really should be thankful that my gear was water tight and I would learn this quickly. I woke cold, soaked to my bones all over again and with nostrils intrenched in the briny stink of yet more sea water. I stood, shook off what wetness I could and wondered if this element truly had a mind of its own and wished to make an enemy of me. I did not know then how accurate my thoughts were.

I could not exit through the cave's ocean facing opening so I needed to venture deeper if I wanted to find respite. I had already learned the hard way that this sea was turbulent, offering no mercy. With water already up to my waist I was not thick skulled enough to try leaving the way I came and diving back into the liquid body which left me in such a sorry state. This shallow interior chamber had been a foolish place to sleep.

Had I not been in such atrocious condition I may have considered braving that terrible water again. I knew myself to be brave but not quite that stupid; so I dredged on into the unknown of the caverns, wet and shivering the entire way.

The water seemed to have bored deep trails ahead of me, wearing away rock and by stopping to observe it was apparent that these formations and trenches in the stone had taken time to form. Many passing cycles, seasons. Perhaps even eons.

Where was I? What world had I landed on? There was enough damned water to name it a few that I knew of. I'd have to look at the topography and geographical markers to know which out of the four or five planets this one could be. That would take walking, much of it. I needed more rest before then.

Finally I came to an opening which led into another chamber. This one was huge, deep but both wide and tall. The rapidly flowing waters passed around my legs to fall at least a hundred and fifty noks into a deep erosion worn pool before flowing out in tendrilous, winding streams which wove around cave columns to form a conjoined and rapid subterranean river. Presumably this water would eventually find its way back into the ocean, most rivers and streams behave this way after all.

From the apex of the waterfall where I stood I could see across the width of the chamber and up toward the ceiling of the space. There was a great wide opening there which led to the surface. I could spy the native flora encircling the cave mouth above and yet more waters flowing into the hole from outside. Immediately I understood the harsh sea and all of this water. Rains had brought on this flooding.

At least within this chamber there appeared to be a few dry haunts in which to escape from this cold, wet onslaught. They were all across the way. Wind worn ledges and over hangs that I could find cover within. One could dig himself inside one of these creases in the eroded walls and make a cramped camp; though one would first have to navigate the way down to the cavern floor.

I will not lie, clambering down was no easy feat with each leg torn open down the front. I nearly lost my footing several times over when my knees threatened to fail and my shivering shook me to the core. Down I went in time, working at a sucklings pace.

The air was thin on this world and that did not help me in my quest to reach the bottom. I really did feel like the climax of a sick joke. I'd heard honored Hish warriors make snide remarks when they thought all other ears too dull. "How many yaut'ja does it take to make fools of their entire race? Just one without his helmet on!"

They never would let us move on from the misfortunes that took place on N'-ithya Ju'dha. _Pauk_ the Hish, and shame on the fact that my Sire had allowed such trash thwei among we people of the last war clan. Permitting them into the clan fold was an outrage that I had voiced openly, disgusting.

Once safely at the floor of the cavern I halted my spelunking shortly to rest my palms over my knees and look on with heavy breaths to figure out a way to navigate to the place I wanted to go. I would have to go over or around the chilled run-off from the rain as it formed many deep looking streams and channels in the rock beds.

There was a way, it involved crossing the slippery mud coated surface of fallen columns and stalactites. I'd get filthy on the way toward the dry crevice in the wall which I traversed toward and whether it was worse to be soaked or dirty is debatable. Either way I did not enjoy the feel of gritty silt and sediment coating my skin and getting into every wound.

Once across and eager to find some rest I was surprised by a scent. It indicated the presence of another in the chamber.

This scent was neither Yautja or Hish but more like the tart scent of an animal, yet somehow it was familiar to me. The familiar aspect put me on edge for I was not too naive to disregard any information my surroundings offered me.

This scent was prey, a species I knew to be dangerous yet I could not quite put a talon on what it might be.

It would have to wait. There was no physical evidence of recent habitation by any creature here. What kind of stupid thing would try to make a nest here anyway? If anything had ever lived here the flooding would have driven it out if not drowned it.

For the sake of assuming nothing until I knew better, I resolved to closely investigate the scent later on. Until then I'd keep alert until I could insure no threat is present. For now I would sleep, inner eye open and watching for danger.

* * *

Authors drivel: I know. I should update my other story. pffffttt. I've actually had this sitting around longer than _Aliens: P_ has even existed in thought. It was time to put up the first chapter.


	2. Not Alone

I woke the next day as light poured into the wide cave chamber from the gaping mouth at the roof.

If I took note of the light's intensity and angle now, then maybe I could make a relatively accurate measurement of how long it takes for a day and night to pass here. This could help me to narrow down what planet I was on. All I would need to do is wait for these conditions to repeat.

Without my helm on the light was interpreted to my vision as a combination of heats radiant glow against rock overlaying the dull image of objects seen within a small measure of some other spectrum of light.

My kind lack the rods, cones, and areas of the brain required to see most variations of the light spectrums outside of the way our minds interpret heat signatures. There is however a few artifacts left over from a part of our evolutionary past which has much to do with display behavior. The furious glow of an angry male's open jowls which is not at all like the flare of heat that spreads over their wide brows. It was another thing altogether separate from seeing warmth. I've been told that the oomans call it "Color Red".

Other aspects of the way we visually interpret the world around us is mainly to aid in conditions where temperature is of such an extreme that everything blurs together.

Today I had plans to investigate my surroundings. With my wits about me instead of overwhelmed with the wet and cold I could make out evidence of an ancient catastrophe in these caverns.

This cave chamber was once intact, the open roof was sealed in layers of rock but at some key point in its history a violent event burst the chamber open at the roof.

I had a theory. This cave system appears to be volcanic. Lower chambers and passages may even harbor magma flows which heat the rock and water trapped between the sheets of stone. This causes the hot fluid to rise from bubbling springs. It is that which created the steaming environment I observed all around me as I peered out from my hole in the wall.

Again, this chamber was once sealed, but had it simply caved in there would be evidence on the floor below which even the oceans daily invasion could not wash away.

The remnants of the roof would be lying there plain as the eye could see if it had fallen in. Giant slabs of rock would be easy to spot although other sediment pulled in might have been swept away by now.

I think pressure built here as the hot springs below were born. A great heat compounding and melting away the less dense materials in the walls, creating the smoothed ledges and precipices I had wrongly mistaken for wind erosion when I had arrived here. Eventually the integrity of the cave structure weakened to the point of failure. Boom. All of that pressure blew up and out.

It could have been triggered by a great disturbance in the ocean which brought on a tidal wave of awesome magnitude, an earthquake, maybe the chamber had simply reached its limit.

However it had happened, the place was still blessed by the bubbling hot springs and steam, making it a hospitable climate for me. Those springs may continue to flow for eons, or simply stop tomorrow. That is the nature of a volcano, which I was now sure existed here. I simply had not noticed anything in the night during the flood. I was too busy being miserable to care at all.

At that moment I was truly grateful for the warmth and humidity. I was able to breathe comfortably without my helm and my skin was not tight and angry with cold. Luck had found me this small luxury of comfort. I would need a great deal more moments of supreme luck if I was going to figure out where I was. Finding a way off of this rock would require more than just luck. The navigation and communications system on the bridge of my sunken ship would make that so much simpler a task.

The night before I had crammed myself into one of the vex con crevices which had melted out with that aforementioned volcanic event. Being that the widest and highest one I could find to keep my sorry skin of the cold seawater was only four noks wide and deep with very little headroom; I woke up feeling like I had spent the night in a storage compartment for lavatory supplies. As I looked over the edge of my hideaway and down into the chamber I could recall my climb up here.

Had it not been for the wounds carved into my legs, the climb might have been effortless. Now that the torn flesh had the time to form encrusted scabbing around the edges I was not too fondly looking forward to the sensation of pulling and stretching those scantily healed injuries. The air had been so moist overnight that the center of each great gash was still wet and using clear fluid. They were not quite bloody anymore but not quite sealed over either.

Were I in peak condition I could have leaped from my perch and to the near stalactites then clambered my way up through the hole in the roof from there. Damn. I have to do more time intensive work than I would like in order find my way back out of this cave and get my bearings.

Oh well, I still had two things left to do in here anyway.

The scent I'd picked up the night before still nagged at my senses. I also wanted to record the light entering the chamber and begin a counter to give me a way to better understand the passing of time.

I need to be able to properly measure days here, wherever _here_ is.

I placed my helm upon my head and then surveyed the wide chamber, turning my gaze left to right. I made a point perform the least troublesome task first, recording the light's angle and strength.

Now came the climb down.

I fell once, caught myself on an overhang, then cursed with such words that would have seen me whipped for my vulgarity had I been on board the clan vessel from which I hail. Mother would beat me stupid but stone dug deep into your gut as you fall with the full force of your weight does not feel pleasant all.

I was stiff, my legs did not want to do is I wanted them to, and now it felt like things were crawling all over me. Wherever I was I was starting to hate it. With an ever-growing intensity.

I quickly realized that little creatures were indeed _crawling_ all upon me. As soon as I reached the bottom and my feet touched the stony floor of the cave I began to slap myself at any place the creatures had managed to scurry onto or… Into.

I eventually lost my battle against them. In the end I had to pull every article of clothing off of my body to get things off me. My awu'asa became a pile by my feet. Even then as I became naked it wasn't enough, I had to practically roll in one of the deeply carved streams to rinse off those that survived my initial attack.

I'm not typically one to lose my mind at the sensation of being crawled over by creatures which make up the bottom of the food chain, but I was getting this distinct feeling that I was not just some obstacle which happened to get in their way or disturb them at some point on my journey down.

I was beginning to think as I examined one extracted from the underside of a shoulder plate. I may have woken with these little beasts already upon me and chewing.

It was like a claw long larvae, tiny chewing pincers at what I can only presume was its front end. The rest of it was like a length of bowel with two rows of barbles for movement of some sort. One of the little shits twisted between my fingers trying to burrow its head under the cuticle of my claw as I held it. The creature was promptly dropped and stamped flat underfoot.

My movement as I clambered down may have been what gave these things a terrible fit as the feasted. The ones still hiding away within my coverings and armor were beaten out and each piece rinsed very thoroughly to avoid having carnivorous little worms dig into my skin for meal.

So, I was soaked again but at least not shivering. The sunlight pouring into the caverns was warming. Soon I was ready and sufficiently over the highly negative experience of being gnawed on by vermin to explore the hunch I'd had the night before based on a scent.

I was sure that something I was familiar with could be living here. It could be another clue to indicate where I might be.

Know your prey. Know the world in which they live. Observe first and save yourself the trouble of being denied the information you need. It was too late really to enact that advice as I'm already ass deep in the environment, possibly camping in an old – _I hope not currently in use_ – den of a creature that I feel on memory of scent could be rather nasty when encroached upon.

Now is the time to investigate and decide on my next actions here. Will I vacate, or will I occupy? There is also the option to wait for what may still live here to return. It could very well have the makings of a handsome trophy.

I looked up for my position as I began to replace my awu'asa, Observing my surroundings. The chamber was vast, as wide as the clan vessels dining hall and _that_ must accommodate 300 or so adults, both males and females.

I could not yet tell how long the chamber was or even make an estimation of that. I could only assume that it is indeed many times as long and deep as it is wide. The problem was this; seeing and navigating within cave systems is not a straightforward business. There are rock formations, stalactites and stalagmites which limit long-range vision as well as other navigational distractions.

In this case, cool pools of ocean water trickling down rocky waterfalls from outside and hot spring pools which faithfully bubble out water with great consistency were a noisy distraction. There were also stone columns which stretched from floor to roof, so many in fact that seeing any straight distance was very difficult.

Finding the prey I'd scented or its den could prove to be tricky. Ah, my sense of smell was still acute. The rest of me may have been sore, torn open, chewed on, or stink with shame but my nose was still strong. It could lead me around as I picked up that familiar odor. It was a bit hard to lock onto, a little bit like metal, irony, slightly offensive to my senses but a bit also like the soured skins of a particular fungus' fruiting body of which I am familiar with. A fruit of the home world, the skins are bitter but the spongy inner body is used in some intoxicatingly sweet foodstuffs meant to be presented to a female or… Nevermind, it was only a stray hungry thought.

Whatever the beast was it _stunk._ Atop that there was an almost sweet, nutty odor but I could differentiate _that_ from the scent of the creature I pursued. They were completely separate smells.

Hmm, I had found the source of the second strange odor. The discarded shells of crustaceous, zabin like creatures were pinned up high on the walls of the cave with twigs impaling them in place. The sticks were jammed with their ends wedged deep into a narrow crack to hold the carcasses horizontal along the walls here between two columns. These two columns were the largest I'd seen so far. They are a most impressive product of eons, made when the stalagmite and stalactite met long ago.

This matter of slaughtered little creatures decorating the space was key, indication that whatever lived here was intelligent. This could be some form of warning to intruders.

"Keep out" I supposed It meant.

High above there was another corridor. At first this opening almost appeared to be merely a depression in the cave wall much like the one where I'd slept. But as I peered up to observe, the slow trickle of water told me plain that the precipice went much deeper. Whether it was simply a channel forged in rock by erosion for waters to flow or lead way to another set of chambers remained to be discovered.

More climbing. I really had my reservations about it. The last thing I really wanted was to clamber halfway up and then find my wounded legs locking up and fall, breaking my neck. This result was very plausible.

I also didn't want to crawl up into this hole find myself attacked by something that was living there, most creatures do not appreciate having their space invaded in such a way.

I'd have been moron to let my curiosity get the better of me and climb up there and have a look but I was, very young and stupid indeed.

Up I went, thinking I was invincible with youth, to peer into that cavity. Ah, The passage is wide enough to move through although I could already tell that I would need to crouch or belly crawl through some areas along the way.

I could smell the evidence of habitation. The scent of bones discarded after the flesh and been consumed, the odor of charred wood which doubly pointed toward a creature capable of wielding fire, therefore reasonably intelligent.

Deeper still I tracked, moving over obstacles and up the gradually sloping passage. It was wet of course, like anything else, but I think because the waters trickling slowly passed me came from yet another hot spring.

As I emerged from the first squeeze down this passage, I found myself in a small chamber only as wide in any direction as two warriors lying head to feet. There were a few unnerving qualities about this small chamber. Easy as ever to spot there were wide cracks in the wall which were completely natural but stones, each no bigger than my foot, were piled in front of each and every crack as if to block them off. I did not feel like tediously moving the stones one by one to find out why.

Not only was there intelligent prey here but now their behavior was beginning to seem a little unsettling. The stone piles, the number of which keep growing as I venture further, then there were the impaled creatures at the entrance. It all pointed toward crazy in my opinion.

My venture into the prey's den finally took me to the epicenter of the creature's activity and domain.

It was another large chamber, not so big as the one where the big blowout had taken place. It was maybe only a third that size but here there were four large columns, another hot spring too but this one was untainted by seawater.

It was warm and fresh, so I dunked my face into it stupidly for a drink. Thirst suddenly overwhelmed caution.

When finally I came up for breath on my hands and knees by the edge I saw something incredible. _Truly_ incredible. There were scratchings on the walls which depicted faces, human faces. An ooman lived here!

I could hardly believe it, an ooman! Worthy prey! An honorable trophy with which I may reclaim my self-respect and more! Cutting one's tusks on the ultimate soft meat would no doubt renew my honor and vanquish the shame of stranding here.

Unfortunately though, this discovery does not much tell me about where I had haplessly crash landed. Ooman kind have been amid the stars for some time now, spreading their civilizations, each ever hungry and all lost in the senseless greed driven hierarchy of their kind.

There are three variants of the ooman race and the difference seems to be a thing of their social order. There are those with power and wealth and often their status is unearned.

While this first breed appears quite sedentary, one should not be fooled into disregarding them. Often these power lusting oomans are at the root of troubles.

Responsible for ticklish situations that may even cause a seasoned warrior to cringe out concerns other, not so bright, hunters may chastise him for voicing openly.

But often the old warrior judges correctly. The legendary Bakuub certainly had when confronted with that familiar ooman greed.

The second type aren't so interesting. They are the common variant. More likely to toil away his or her life in manual labor than to prove worthy as prey however under the right conditions this type may change sufficiently from the subservient life dedicated to menial labor and become something more. Something cunning and dangerous. They may become the third and final breed.

Then even among these oomans, the rare and intelligent fighters, only a handful of them may equal fine and mature Yautjan warrior. It was an individual of this final and highest prized breed that I hoped for. I give a quiet prayer to Paya for warrior to serve a challenge to me, to enrich my path and save its honor.

* * *

(If you're confused about a paragraph where I suggested that Yautja (predators) can see the color red, I assure you there is a reason I put that there.

Their pink inner mouths and jowls have been a mind bending boggle to me for years because of this...

"_If their blood is green and glowing once it hits open air, wouldn't it makes sense for their mucus membranes (like the mouth) to be a greenish color? Not red?"_

That has driven me crazy for a long time. So I said to myself...

"_Maybe it's for display behavior... But they only see heat. Maybe bits of their brains can interpret the color red? Do they even have the rods and cones in their eyes for that? Crap, I dunno!"_

So, like many authors before me, I took some creative liberties in order to make just a tiny bit of sense out of something that never actually made any damn sense in the films. Sorry if that just raises more questions than answers.

Just do yourself a favor and don't look too closely at the weird details in the films or else you'll end up like me. lol.)


	3. Desperation

"My name was Cir'idi and I died trapped on an island. Shame to me."

I mused that this was what I should scratch into the nearest rock whenever I finally begin to die so that the message could be found nearest to my corpse. Surely other hunters would one day come to explore these worlds twirling about this star system only scantily inhabited by oomans.

Well, at the very least this _one_ ooman inhabited this rock.

I left the cave along the route I'd entered it as this was the only sure path I knew out of these twisted stone corridors. Of course this led me out to cling onto the cliff face that I'd met so harshly day before. And there was more climbing to do of course.

My legs soon burned and ached, but my mission was to find high ground so that I may see the furthest distance possible.

Distantly I saw the stoney summit of a mountain rising from the tangle of thick jungle. That became my goal, and although an unconscious talon gripped at a tender thigh my resolve was hard as stone. I would make my way to the top.

The trek was a battle. I rasped for air in several standstills along the way, holding onto ribs I'd almost forgotten about until then. There were two broken and I knew it to be part of the test, the journey. I kept going despite my discomfort for I was in no mood to find more failure in myself.

Perhaps this entire series of events was meant by the gods as a test. Sure, the thought was stupid but I needed a reason to will myself to the summit.

Once I stood on the peak, looking out upon the world below I came to realize that I was wrong. I needed only to place my helm properly upon my face to see the evidence to the contrary of my thoughts on the way up.

My mask could see so much further than I could, take my vision from the distance a look to that of three. Water! More water, ocean every direction I looked.

I knew now, the gods wished me death. Not only that, they wished to grant me a slow, shamed death. I was on island. PAUK! Pauk. I was not only trapped on planet I did not know, but upon a puny spit of land in the middle of an ocean.

I had to sit, get down on my hands and knees to beg Paya for a sign of their intent. Why had the gods influenced my sire to send me on a path journey? What could I learn here except how to die like an animal?

All that could be done here was lose myself, my honor, to let the eternal hunt goes stagnant, then finally meet the hands of Cetanu by way of illness or malnutrition. I would not die in the glory of battle.

I realize now how I must have sounded, howling at the gods pathetically for help from the top of a mountain. Hindsight is very clear, but I digress.

My heart had shuddered and begun to feel heavy. This was not a step my in life for godly intervention, it was either to be a step toward death or toward the truth of myself, of discovering what was there within me that I still had to learn.

No deity could help me navigate the labyrinth of my own soul. This journey I had to face alone, more alone than I had ever been. In such journeys even the gods leave you, the purpose so unclear to you then.

I cursed my father at that moment, the old codger thought himself a mystic and his whims were often frustratingly confusing. What was I supposed to do now?

I'd forgotten all about the ooman by the time I made it back into the jungle below. I was tired, defeated and I could not bring myself to care any longer. I was ready to make camp within the cave and wait to die.

I did just that; crawling into the crag the cavern wall where I had been resting the night before. So father had sent me on a journey to find my path, the gods intervened to abandon me here in order to end my life or alternatively define it.

That was what it seemed anyway, I had no other way to interpret it all.

I was unsure of what to do from here and I was certain that should I abuse my supplies for the sake of comfort now I would suffer for it later. I could not waste too much effort or supplies on my wounds nor could I ignore them. It would have to be carefully rationed, everything would.

Time needed much more to be spent on repairing my equipment. It was a good distraction to tinker and I realized in time that my racing thoughts had been to blame for much of the ridiculous conclusions my mind had concocted after the disappointment of learning that I was trapped on an island.

It was much more than mere disappointment really but if I made no effort at all to save myself by repairing my equipment the dishonor on my soul would only compound. Another option was to instead erase my existence altogether. Honorable suicide.

It would be a great dark mark on not only my name but the names of my parentage if my corpse and my belongings were found by oomans or another race of sentient travelers amid the stars.

Anonymity is the way of the people, the policy which kept the cultures of the peoples pure.

It also kept the cultures and technology of other races pure their own devices. It is no secret that we are not interested in sharing our technological prowess with the other races. We'd achieved a society that had very nearly abolished in fighting and war without the need to join forces against a common threat.

In truth, for a time in my people's history _we_ were the common threat to the other worlds. We certainly did not achieve our greatness merely on our own birth world. We took our physical prowess and used it in conjunction with our will, lust for glory and perhaps the delusions of grandeur by many points of leadership to exploit the bounty of other star systems. This is how we acquired much of the resources needed to become one of the major forces that now shapes the known universe.

There are others like us, some even more secretive. We generally try to ignore each other in a form of xenophobia based on some sort of mutually intense superiority complex.

Long story made small and simple, remaining anonymous is always best. But _best for me is best for you_ isn't always the policy that best serves justice. There are a few races which surely deserved a talon to uplift them, but let us think with clarity. Low races like the ooman kind possessing too much power than they can hold safely even if intended for the the greater good may pose a threat to all races. No need to leave myself or possessions for them to find.

Thinking of something too intensely may just bring it onto you. Up until that very moment I'd forgotten of the evidence I'd seen of at least _one_ ooman making its living here. I'd been busy wallowing in self-pity until I heard the thing wondering about just below my perch within the cave wall.

It was close, _far_ too close for my comfort when much of my equipment was still defunct. If my mangled wrist device decided to sputter I might not even be able to conceal myself if the need arose.

I could do little more than peek carefully over the edge of my hide and hope for it to wander into my line of sight.

Now that I remembered what worthy the prey race dwelled here, I prayed once more for warrior. If I can at least test myself against the ultimate soft meat than I may not be dishonored completely upon being saved from this place.

I moved silently for the blade of my calf, unsheathing it from the scabbard slowly in anticipation. So long as the ooman did not carry one of their primitive burners I felt that I could take it on without needing to conceal myself or make use of my own burner which was dysfunctional for the time being.

Hand-to-hand combat was considered the greater challenge, therefore greater was its glory. I'd fight the soft meet hand-to-hand, fist to fist and conquer. I was anxious to save my honor and my kin's reputation.

surely and oomans skull would be a spectacular token of respect and gratitude to present my sire.

I was so certain of myself, and of the human being a great warrior that I nearly leapt upon the first sign of movement that crossed my vision. It was a blessing that my legs would not have had it in their condition.

I'd hesitated when the tension of my impending spring from the cave wall sent a wave of pain from my knees and into my nethers.

What I saw when I regained my senses was something scrawny, young, probably malnourished. It was but a child! Tiny and hardly old enough to be considered prey at all. In astonishment I began to wonder why it was not attended by a parent. It had little muscle definition which is typical to youngling's both of their kind and my own, that was part of my estimation of its age.

What a massive disappointment. I could hope that it was not alone for a little while but soon that thought would be vanquished as well.

Although oomans mature quickly and this one may be an adult in no time at all, it should still be relying on older individuals during this stage of its life. The next few hours would see it scavenging the cave chamber in search of a anything that might have been washed in through the opening in the roof and drowned.

The young one was wary, looking to its left, right, over its shoulder and all around often. Any sound drew its immediate attention and I could even hear its heart drum faster at any sudden noise. I had shifted my weight on my high perch too suddenly, causing a small stone to be knocked down onto the cave floor below. This had caused its head to whip around in all directions until its eyes found that stone out of place.

I could have spat and cursed my ineptitude as the ooman began to look higher up the walls for where the offending stone had come from, but as luck would have it, the tiny ooman was distracted in time to save me from being detected.

Some poor creature soaked to the skin muddled about scratching at walls looking for a way out of the caverns. I found the ooman's next actions quite unsettling.

The soft meat child had lifted the stick it carried with it and gave chase to the disoriented animal, striking the smaller beast over the head to stun it and then following up its initial attack by beating it with its makeshift weapon until it did not rise again.

No, this wasn't right. Young humans do not do this unless they are alone and without an adult to care for them, nor would one be so vigilant if it had the protection of kin.

I put my blade away, for there is no honor in taking the breath from a skinny child which only wanted to eat tonight.

I continued to watch out of morbid curiosity more than anything else. Keeping an eye and ear focused on it was probably a good idea anyway.

The soft meat possessed a blade but one too small to be regarded as a weapon. It was merely a tool to open the hide of the animal that it had killed. The shaft of the blade was probably not even robust enough to cut through the little bones of the feet which was why they were left upon the freshly skinned and gutted carcass.

A fire was built on stone formation high enough off the cave floor to stay dry. There had also been a cash of dry branches and twigs hidden away from the water.

I had to give ooman some small measure of respect. It was bright enough to survive.

The kill went directly onto the hot coals to cook through. Oomans always burned their food and frequently I found myself wondering _why_ whenever I was there to witness the behavior.

I knew the texture of burnt flesh to be terrible but the smell that the heated meat gave off made me salivate. I was hungry and had not eaten in days. My last meal had been during the early hours of the cycle before my ship had crashed.

It was a bit torturous to watch but if it wasn't already clear that the young ooman was struggling to live on its own; the way it ravenously bolted its food would have been all the more indication I needed. It was terribly hungry. This might have been its first bite in as many days as I had suffered.

It was disgusting to watch the thing eat with its ugly mouth hole, shoving oversized morsels in and swallowing hard to get it all down. Surely isolation had shaped the ooman into a little savage. As repelling as the sight was I found myself engrossed, this was probably my future if I waited long enough to go and lose my mind.

The thought was quite depressing, so was the desperation twisting knots in my gut. I wasn't fond of scorched flesh at all but the stench of it was sweet to my senses after days cold, wet, and hungry. I had momentarily considered hopping out of my hide-away and chasing the little one off its meal. But it would do no good. It would taste awful and alert the child to my existence.

So I turned my eyes away finally so that I may rest in my high, cramped camp listening to the human chew.

Some time later as the fire it squatted next to began to die the ooman child fell silent. As the palpable quiet drew on I wondered if it had fallen asleep. Young creatures generally do that, eat and then fall sleep. So, as I leaned over to look again I expected to find its form lying down.

No, it was standing over the meal it seemed to have forgotten about. Its body was tense and I swore that I saw the hair on the back its neck stand on end. Something had spooked it and it soon became obvious just what sort of creature had the soft meat so very disturbed.

Its wide eyes peered in my direction, head angled to face the cavern wall three fourths the way up. It knew I was there. Could it sense me? I knew for certain that humankind did not see the way yautja do. They see something else. Their vision somehow depended on the waves of energy that the star in the center of a solar system gave. Perhaps it had to do with the glow suns give to illuminate things when all objects blurred together in extreme heat or deadly cold.

It did not matter, I knew that the creature would be mostly blind in the shadows and I knew the warmth of the setting sun did not reach me where I was.

I still had to wonder if I was wrong for it was glaring right into my hole in the wall. I'd have to kill it if it became too aware of me.

If any contact was made; the youngling would have to die.

It would not create a dark mark on my name to protect the sacred anonymity but it would certainly be an unpleasant chore. Worse yet; to hear it scream for help that would never come. I quietly asked the gods to guide the young one away, not to let it become too curious.

Paya must smile on the youngling. It retreated slowly, neither running or turning its back on the threat it had detected. It backed away in steady, carefully calculated steps until it was out of my sight.

It is my experience that most humans wail a shrill cry upon the sight of my kind in a gut reaction to the clear physiological differences seen especially in our faces. Because of the silence I was fairly sure that my countenance was still a mystery to the prey pup. If it had seen me then surely things would not have been so quiet as it retracted from the grand main chamber into the deeper reaches of the cavern. This was a good thing. That ordeal had nearly been disastrous. I could have been left further dishonored or the ooman left dead for no good reason.

What now? I was not at all willing to give up such a warm and humid haven, yet sharing it with a sentient being so astute to the normal sights and sounds of the cave would present a challenge.

I could faintly hear the little one's feet padding all the way back until it reached the recently inhabited set of chambers I had discovered earlier. I was pleased to know that I could hear the retreat all the way until that point.

The ooman was probably going to hole up and hide for some time meaning that it would not emerge into the main chamber for a long while. I could move about freely now.

I found it less difficult to leave my camp than the morning before. The little vermin were still bother however that too was less hassle now that I was not surprised by them crawling on my skin.

I knew the climb and the bugs, so I could manage it without making a loud fuss over it. Not that I hated the little worms any less.

Down on the cave floor I investigated the leavings of the fellow resident here. The charred carcass of the small beast it had beaten to death was only half consumed. Realizing it was not alone had interrupted the ooman's messy and somewhat frantic ritual of satisfying desperate hunger.

It just lay there with haphazard bites taken out of it.

I felt wretched. I was too tired and too weak to track prey animals for sustenance myself. The wildlife had an advantage over survivors like the ooman and lost travelers like me. The creatures were probably native, adapted and by primal instinct their sensory was acute. In this state they would be able to elude me with ease.

The curious thing about oomans was their a adaptability. That youngling had a better handle on its chances of survival at the moment than I did. It was in fair health, no injuries and no obvious illness ailing it. The little prey was tiny and perhaps lived every day on the verge of starvation but it could walk without struggle and did not rasp for breath when it exerted too much effort. Simply said it was better off than I was, but that made me feel no better as I scavenged its forgotten kill.

Eating after it was no doubt disgusting but also self degrading. My bearer would have drowned me a birth if she had foreseen this; her pup relying on a lesser being for food.

It was reasonable to surmise that the ooman would probably just assume that animals had scavenged its kill, not a damned alien hunter that would have otherwise taken its head had it been a little older and a bit tougher.

Nothing justified picking the meat from the bones of strangers kill, and although I might not have been shaking with hunger when I was done my stomach was as sour as my mood.


	4. Fire

Watching the ooman over the following days revealed a little about the individual and the situation here. I'd used my helm to watch; as various vision modes were able to see deeper into the physiology.

I learned that the ooman was a bit older than I had originally thought as the growth plates of the long bones indicated with more advanced fusion but malnutrition over a moderately long span of time may have stunted the creature.

It was also female, and should have been at the cusp of discovering female adulthood. Never quite getting enough to eat may have stalled that development as well.

The fact that ooman and yautja biology was vaguely similar on the surface made it easier to identify these features but my sire had taught the finer skills needed to discern the age of pyode amedha.

Ooman kind were my sire's favored prey. I think this was because he found their behavior interesting. I too was most familiar with them in my youth as oomans were often the species of choice when my father insisted that we hunted together.

As I grew it became apparent that I did not share his interest in them, after many hunts and many ooman skulls hanging from my trophy cages I grew bored of them and sought out greater challenges in the universe.

Perhaps I had done too much praying for new and unfamiliar things to overcome. This island was just a bit too much of a pain in the head.

The ooman that I observed never stopped looking over her shoulder, her ears were always listening too.

I didn't need a strong nose to sense the fear radiating from the little beast. Something on this island had her watching for her imminent death at all times. This kind of fear would not come from a sudden interloper like me, I'd been careful and the mistakes that had alerted her to me before were easily forgotten. Also easy for someone in her position to attribute to their senses fooling them.

The fear that she displayed was habitual, there was something dangerous on the island and she had been living there with it lurking for as long as she had been alone. And I was certain her time on her own was more than just a few weeks.

Anticipation ignited fire in my gut and in my loins. I could hardly wait to meet the beast that tyrants this place. The island may bare fruit for the hunt after all, just have to let it ripen.

You could wager your name that I'd be watching the ooman carefully, it could be useful at some point if she was being hunted by something far more dangerous than herself. I could track her and hope that whatever she so feared would be stalking her as well. Until then she would be merely a nuisance.

I could only work on repairing the solar charger when she was out of the cavern entirely and roaming the island, doing whatever it was that she did in her abundant spare time.

My work on my half mangled equipment could not be done without noise and the ooman was so damned attuned to the sounds of her surroundings. I could hardly leave my hide away to take a piss without her roaming the entire grand chamber, holding up her pathetic stick as she searched for the intruder. As if she could even harm much more than another confused, rain wet rodent with it.

It was truly a wonder she was still alive, then again her senses always seemed to give her a warning when something was too near for her comfort.

My other little trouble was that I wasn't healing as I should. Not quickly enough. I was still in a great deal of pain, my wounds were not closing. I had at least several periods of activity and sleep and my legs should have sealed over but still the center of each tear in the flesh oozed and bled when stretched. Perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me, maybe it had not been so long at all. The rotation of the planet seemed to be a slow one, there had not been a cold time since my arrival on this world. No night. So, perhaps I was losing grip on my perception of the passing time.

More I thought about it the more curious I became; this world was strange or at the very least my location on the planet was unusual. I came to a revelation then. All became clear and I began to understand where I was.

I checked my helm for the recordings I had made of the light's intensity and angle through the hole in the roof. It had been much too long for there not to have been a night; despite the time passing and the warmth periodically waning it never went away completely.

I hadn't been paying attention and I should've been following the journey of the damn sun across the skies. If I done that like I'd set out to do then I would've known that I was either on the north or south end of the dirt ball. But what world could be so warm at its poles?

Cycles back to back without night? A warm climate in its most cool zones? This was the planet called Fire. We called it so because around the middle of it you must wear thermal meant to cool the skin, not heat it.

The creatures there are so alien because they had to evolve under conditions unimaginable. Life here had take entirely drastic paths to survive.

I was confused. How was it that I could breathe here? This worlds atmosphere was toxic beyond any chance of removing one's helm and living to tell a soul about it.

My sire had been here more than once. He told me everything a suckling could hope to hear about ventures into volatile hunting grounds.

The poles were tropical but receding quickly as the oceans were drying out and precipitating away. For now that meant violent ocean storms but one day everything would be as arid and dead as the volcanic belt around the middle of the world. It was a limited time paradise for hunters seeking a challenge to rival all others. The further from the flaming belt you went the more livable the conditions became, most notably the head and foot of this space rock.

There were large and glorious prey there, but I had to crash down on an island. Damn.

My sire had told me most earnestly that the sun in the sky, the giant fireball which warmed or scorch the world depending on where its gaze fell. He had told me that one must look very closely to see how special was, the settings on one's helm had to be just right to get past the gratuitous heat that the star gave off.

I chanced the ooman hearing me to leave the cavern hurriedly. I had to confirm this realization. To be sure of my fate.

Out I went, clinging to the cliffs as I turned my eyes toward the sun, helm on and filtering Through all vision modes. Checking all standard and modified, any and all settings this helmet may have been used for before it came into my possession. There! The very last mode I checked must be specific to filtering through such intense heat that it would be useless unless I was staring at a near star or into the flame of a welding torch.

I focused, looking carefully at the sun. It was oblong shaped, this was because it wasn't a star, it was _two_ stars.

One star hidden behind the other partially, peeking around the first to its right. Later in the year, further in the planet's rotation, the stars may appear more clearly as a pair.

Without doubt in my mind I knew where I was, for the world of Fire was a part of a binary star system. This was the only system which I could think of with two stars that I'd been anywhere near in the last days of my journey before the crash.

There was now hope. Every season when the younglings return from the Chiva hunts to their mothers as men the elder warriors of the clan prepare for the coming breeding season. To prepare, we hunt.

At least three packs that I knew of always plan to stop here and chase the great beasts to the south. No, it would not look good on me to be found stranded, but I was steadily realizing my cowardice and my incompetence. I was not ready to die, I'd rather lose my honor than perish here. I may even lose my name if I chose this path, reduced from my father's apprentice to eta.

But I wanted to live. I cursed myself for such selfishness, jeopardizing the name of my father and even the sanctity of the law; all to save myself from the black warrior. I returned to the caverns to sulk, feeling lower than I ever thought possible.

Well, I _would_ repair my awu'asa and I _would_ send a signal for rescue when the moment of opportunity came, I assured myself of that. I decided that I'd wait until the peak of the hunting season and hope one of the hunting packs would catch my communication transmissions for assistance. If possible I would also try to contact my sunken ship with my wrist communicator. The chances were minute, but maybe the vessel could pull itself out of the muck. Unloading that much power into the thrusters would drain the power cells, but if my saving only depended on the need for fuel I may not lose my name. I could live with being laughed at for incompetence in the piloting of vessels.

Those last thoughts helped me to calm myself. It was a very small chance but enough to take the edge off my nerves. It couldn't be the way my path ends, I could not accept that. That must be why I so feared the idea of terminating myself for the greater good or dying of exposure out here. My story will not end on this island; of that I knew, I knew it in every cell of my body.

I did not exactly find myself lucky when I returned to the cave. The ooman was out of its much deeper domain in the underground and at that spot again with something on a small fire. I truly could not distinguish what that prospective meal of hers once was, however it smelled slightly better since the last time I witnessed her eating habits.

I will say that this is just about where everything started to go down a path without return.

That night the ooman finished most of her meal, but once again the bones were left behind. I had this feeling that if she were not so perturbed by any noise I created she might have done a better job disposing of them so that animals did not come to scavenge her leavings.

I could not help myself, I picked what I could from the carcass. This act felt just as repugnant as the last instance. Also, this time the food available to me was less, so as I left the cave I still felt weak. It could not be helped, I had questions that needed answers.

Fire's atmosphere should be completely toxic and now that I knew where I was the flora looked all wrong too. Like it had been transplanted here purposefully. I'd seen conditions on worlds change rapidly, but never so instantaneously as the passing of seasons which would see an individual grow from a suckling into an adult ready to sire his own.

Yautja have the power to make this so, shaping worlds to suit their needs. However, this world was clan territory. My sire and bearer had staked a claim here long ago, before my time. The planet of Fire was off-limits to any packs outside of the clan fold. That is unless they'd been granted a boon hunt as a reward for favor or something to that nature. If this was yautja doing then a treaty had been broken.

Oomans could be responsible for this as well. They were often at the root of trouble and it had been well documented that they had the power to change conditions to suit their needs as well. I worry about my latter theory, oomans have a nasty habit of using nuclear constructs to power snap up settlements. I'd seen plenty of those settlements go up in blasts great enough to rouse the gods. I'd really rather not live next something like that.

My exit from the caverns was the same old struggle since I'd landed here, the damned climb up the cliffs was awful but easier than trying to fall in stages down the side of it when my legs locked up. At the top of the cliff face were hanging tangles of flora draped over the ledges and outcroppings. I could clamber up these quite easily despite my injuries, not that I wasn't still clumsy and ungainly about it.

The jungle was not as treacherous nor as thick as some I'd come to know but I could not bear to make my journey through the canopy for very long. The strain was just too great. So, I had to walk on the jungle floor. At least I had managed to get my awu'asa to hide my image, bending the light around my form. Such things being functional was a comfort, better than questing for intelligence whilst exposed to possible prying eyes. This did however consume my emergency power supply.

I needed more information about this island. Why could I take the air into my chest without perishing? It was a good thing for now, if I'd not been able to breathe here that I would've succumbed the cycle I had arrived. It was not so terrible a thing to have ooman settlements on this world either; my sire would probably be pleased by it in fact.

But I wasn't so pleased; I was stuck here and the pyode amedha always cause trouble where they venture.

I had walked since the star was high in the sky until it lingered near to the horizon without ever quite dipping below it, and I rasped for breath. It was the third time that day that I had to stop and will my breathing under control.

The pain of my broken ribs was manageable unless I was having an attack. I'd had broken bones before and had learned to overcome the discomfort, but these attacks would come without warning and begin with tightness in the center of my chest which would then spread to the throat. I did not like the feeling and I'd never experienced anything like it before. It would aggravate my wounded side, as shallow panicked breaths are never good for that sort of injury.

I'll be sure to remind you that I was bodily slammed into a closed-door when my ship hit Fire's atmosphere, the time I spent fighting the storming ocean thereafter had broken what was only weakened before.

Now I could hardly walk the distance of a look without the sensation of being strangled and kicked at the ribs.

I was really starting to hope that the ooman juvenile was alone here despite the excitement I had previously felt at the prospect of hunting her kind.

If a troop of oomans trained their burners on me now? I'm fairly certain even their little stingers would be sufficient to destroy me.

"If you can't breathe properly, you're fucked." My mother's words rang loudly in my mind. It was a hard lesson I learned from her early on. All children, young ones training for their chiva, have their mothers to thank for their first lessons. Mine took the lessons more seriously than most and exploited weakness when she saw it. I'd left an opening and she'd taken it to slap her ignorant offspring at the throat in order to demonstrate the ease in dispatching opponent that cannot breathe.

I remembered this lesson very vividly as I sat there unable to properly fill my chest in that very moment. My only relief was my helm but pushing air through the filters was draining my power, and the odds were getting worse for me. I had two marks left on the power cell out of 10, the display my helm gave me to see in my peripheral vision told me so. In a few hours the backup supply of energy would run out, and so would my luck. I will have learned nothing about the place and wasted not only time but precious energy.

I spent much of the time I should have been sleeping lost in that strange jungle choking for air, then finally as the nearby star began to climb away from the horizon yet again it stopped… Mysteriously I could take in breath without the struggle once again but officially my emergency power cells were dead. I had no breathing aid in case of yet another emergency. At that point I was thinking that I would be better off spending my time in the cave making repairs to that solar unit.

I could of course put the helm on but the only usefulness that could come of it was to shield my head from the overgrown flora, it seemed that all of it was thorny and tough. The hide of my shoulders and hands were more than thick enough to endure it but I'd rather not feel those thorns in my eyes. Enough of me was miserable already.

I wouldn't call it luck, for everything I'd done on the island so far was an idiotic accident but after I became turned around in the thick overgrowth I came to a break in the jungle. I was standing at the apex of a rocky slope and looking on over much ooman structure. The buildings did not have the look of dwellings, something else for sure but what?

It had the immediate appearance of something industrious and I could hear a faint hum from the place droning on even at this distance. Perhaps this was the source of the clean and oxygen-rich air?

The tall round sided pyramid spires seem to suggest that as they spouted warm vapor from each of their tops. This didn't appear as big a place as it should for the ooman's nuclear reactors.

The rock beneath my talons was volcanic, so perhaps they had harnessed the volcanism of the island to power the terraforming plant? I was curious enough to ignore my suffering and continue down the slope to have a closer look but I had to halt my progress halfway. For once it was not my injuries which held me up, what I saw in my vision and what I felt in my gut stopped me.

This ooman settlement, it was quite dilapidated but the forest was eerily quiet. Nothing chirped. Nothing moved. All was silenced by something that dwelled here.

It was an ominous sight, as if a cold darkness lingered there. My instincts told me to walk away from this and in my condition, I came to reconcile my gameness. I should listen to what the instincts have to say. I had learned to listen to them through the survival trials all children must undergo before they could begin training as warriors.

Back then my instinct had kept me alive, I felt that once again they were trying to warn and protect me.

Maybe when I had healed I'd return to this place and conquer it. But for now? I slithered back to the caverns, feeling as pathetic as a frightened child.

* * *

That was a longish chapter. The next one is going to be SUPER short but the one that follows that one shall be glorious! I just need to finish outlining that phase of the story and scratch it all out in my notebook. So yeah. Stay tuned. Thanks a bunch you wonderful freaky people.


	5. Bait

What transpires on the island mustn't be evil, it couldn't be. Or could it? I thought heavily upon it as I worked my claws dull in the crevice that I now lived in. That place I had visited two days earlier felt so _wrong_. That feeling about it which had me so disturbed, it must be my nerves or else I was simply going mad. The latter conclusion was not a pleasant thought.

I paused my repairs to glance carefully out into the grand chamber. The ooman was out and about again. I could curse it for interrupting my time trying to fix something I probably now needed if I wanted to live. But it would not help any.

It was cooking again, skinning a pair of scrawny looking creatures to eat. Much of what the young one caught was not very substantial, those little beasts she had roasting on the fire that night would hardly make any difference in satisfying my own appetite.

I sighed as quietly as possible as not to disturb it and I resigned my effort to mend my awu'asa for tomorrow. I could not make noisy work with that skinny prey whelp milling about below. The ooman's kills were winged creatures, I learned this by observing carefully.

I wondered how she had managed to slay them, such flapping beasts are wary and take flight the slightest of threats. Perhaps there existed a skill in hunting here as well; not just savagery and desperate hunger.

The tiny hunter made quick work in consuming the first flyer, picking each bone clean as is its wont. I was sure she did not always get to eat daily so every meal seemed to be cherished.

As I'd seen many times before her little head turned to look in all directions often, then she held still to listen carefully. Gods, living with little imp was difficult, seldom do oomans pay this much attention to sound. She tossed the cleaned bones into one of the flowing waterways to be carried off.

As I'd suspected she knew enough not to attract scavengers to her domain by dumping guts and bones to smell up the place like an enticing potpourri to predators.

Onto the next flyer, but she did not eat. She stared at the thing on the stick as if debating with herself internally. Though her face was ugly and mostly featureless, the look reminded me of my sire. He was always lost in his thoughts.

It was then after a long pause on both our parts that she turned her eyes precisely upon my little hole in the wall, head rotating slowly and chin lifting to peer up. I knew she could not see me in this cold shadow, but the accuracy of her guess as to where something living and breathing was had me wondering just how well humans can see in the darkness. Could her vision be better than I thought?

I was due for another shock, the little thing began to vocalize at me. If I hadn't known myself to be alone here in this damn wall I might have looked around trying to figure out who she was talking at. Who else could there be for her to try babbling at the me?

I was stunned as I listened and watched. The ooman left the second charred flyer impaled on its stick by the fire and backed away expectantly. She squatted at the fringes of flickering warmth from the fire, just waiting for the interloper in her territory to appear. Hell maybe she had noticed that something had taken up residence here because the food she left behind when spooked kept on disappearing without the evidence of animal culprits.

It took a little while for her words to burrow into my ears and make some sense. I did not understand all of it but I caught enough to figure out the she was trying to feed me because she could hear how sickly my breaths sounded. It was hard not to take offense, I was pretty humiliated to discover how obvious my ails were to a creature that could not even see me. I could try all I like to convince myself that I was a grown man who could care for himself but here I was being proven wrong by not only a child but one belonging to a lesser species. At that age I was too proud to admit that physically I was not all that much more mature than she was. I was quite young, but had I not been maimed in the crash there would be no mistake. It would've been obvious that I was no incompetent child. Right at that moment however, as terrible as my physical state was, it didn't matter. For all the ooman knew this intruder in her territory could be as pitiful as a child.

Her pity for me, in my apparently audibly poor health, on the other hand was an offense. But I could forgive it on the grounds that she was indeed a child herself. All children are pretty tender minded, the ooman kind's younglings in particular.

Paya! This runt was trying to bribe me out, she even set aside her flimsy little club so as to become less threatening. Too bad. I was not about to stumble out reveal myself to the little wench.

There she remained crouched and waiting long into the twilight. By the time the dual suns were high in the sky once again I'd not slept, had to take a wicked leak, and the little cave creeper was still sitting there waiting.

She was refusing to back down or give up on her quest to know whom or what had invaded her space. We, as it turned out, were both too stubborn to give in. I couldn't tell if she was asleep sitting up or simply still waiting for the alien she did not realize she was trying to lure out into the open.

Late into the midday, enough was enough and I could take no more of this. It was certainly not the promise of meager food that brought me down from my perch, it was ONLY due to my need to relieve myself. The ooman wanted to know my face? Fine. Dammit all, fine. I _had_ to go do what I had to and there comes a point when one no longer cares who may be watching, but first I'd give the little devil what she wanted.

I managed to avoid looking overly clumsy and wounded on the way down to the cave floor and once I turned my gaze in her direction she was, as expected, standing and alert. Her eyes though, I knew then that my point had been made when I saw them open wider than I ever thought possible. I wasn't about to stop there though, she was going to find out just what sort of creature full of prowess and might she'd beckoned out of hiding.

She was eerily still as I approached, aside from the chill which invisibly crawled up her spine and caused her to tremble even in the comfortably warm air. I was impressed at first really, the way her feet remained planted, not even taking a step back when our eyes met in challenge! She was a brave little shit stain, but I would not tolerate such a challenge. Not from an insolent, pup sized, runt of an ooman.

It must be done. I'd reached out swiftly to seize her at the throat and lift her, anticipating the feel of the prey whelp struggle without any hope of gaining purchase against my stony grip. But much to my surprise my claws caught nothing but air, the digits were so stunned in their own right that they opened and clenched closed again on reflex.

She'd dropped out of the way of my move to grab her with such speed that I almost thought her duck was intentional.

No, finally I backed up a step when I realized that the ooman was motionless on the cave floor. In truth, I did not know what had happened or what to do.

She was just laying there, crumpled on her side as if dead. For two breaths I thought she might be. I even nudged the prey with my foot, then roared over her when I was sure that she was still breathing. No response, not even a twitch. Was this a defense mechanism?

Paya, what in creation- It was unconscious for sure but I had not even struck it! I hadn't the knowledge or experience then to understand, I did not know much about oomans that were not worthy prey and even less about their young. I'd also never seen any creature just slip into unconsciousness and drop like that merely from fright.

I backed away from the body in my confusion, looking at it from a distance for a long moment before turning away to let my stream go in the waterway flowing out back to the ocean.

I rinsed my hands once I was done and returned to the prone body lying on the ground. At first there was nothing new to see, only trivial details. The ooman had quite the collection of little scars from scrapes and scratches. Even adult ooman skin breaks like an infant's, they're very delicate. I looked at the dullness of the creature's claws next and that was when I noticed a single new detail.

I'd have overlooked it had she not dropped to the floor conveniently within the area where the hole in the roof of the cave allowed the sun's warmth to pour in. Something about the skin at the back of her right hand was different. It captured the hot rays of solar energy and absorbed it, glowing hotter than the rest of her skin. I had seen this before, some individuals had markings etched into their skin with needles and a dark, light absorbing pigment or ink.

I knew that was not the point for an ooman to have it done, they did not see how it could glow bright in the sun but surely they felt how such a skin modification warmed in under the gaze of a nearby star. They probably saw something very different than I did.

My kind were known to do this as well but for the sake of having images or creative works which are only visible when the sun radiated its heat upon our skin. We called the practice _Ve'glek_, a shortened term for _ink that is kept_.

I had none of my own, so with curiosity I looked at her hand carefully, grasping the fingers to bring the design more directly into the sun's beams of heat. It was a symbol of some sort and it was familiar to me but only vaguely. I soon lost interest and dropped the creature's appendage.

The prey pup still had not moved or showed signs of stirring so I had a moment to ponder. The time to dwell and ruminate on things can be dangerous. I resolved to do something stupid.

That skewered flyer was still sitting there impaled upon the stick she charred it on. She'd left it as an offering of hospitality. Perhaps I was tainting the rules, but this was _her_ territory and she had offered me this food from what little she possessed. I was indeed hungry. So, I thought, it would be poor etiquette not to consume it. I stepped away from the limp body to eat the meager meal she'd offer to me.

Of course many seasons later, I now realize that I was surely thinking with only my stomach.

It wasn't as if lingering out from my hideaway would bring about more damage to my honor. I behaved poorly in revealing myself, so harm was already done. I was exposed for what I was and the ooman child would wake aware of the presence of greater beings amid the stars. It was a foolish thing to do, realization of such idiocy soured my stomach. She would rise knowing I was here and certainly not one of her own kind. What would she do? This was a child, I should expect to witness hysterical fear at first, but I had observed her to be violent if need be. Her world was kill or be killed, so with that in mind that took away the stick she often carried around. It wasn't as if she could harm me with it, but rather not have her wake with the intention of swinging it at me.

Again, most for kind shriek a shrill cry of horror at our bare faces, so her reaction was sure to be dramatic.

The burnt and long cold flyer barely made a difference to my days empty got, however it sufficed to sooth my last lingering remnants of annoyance for the ooman girl's persistence. Having something to chew on helped that a great deal.

My thoughts were soon disturbed by the sound of hasty, shallow breaths. With a slight turn of my upper body my gaze fell upon the child. Her eyes of course were wide open and focused on me as she sprawled low to the stony ground upon her grubby, little worm fingers and knobby knees.

She was in some state of shock, frozen in a position braced for the attack that she must've concluded that I'd initially intended to deliver. She was not wrong in her assessment of why I'd come down here. The first thing I'd wanted to do when I clambered down to her level was grab her by the head and shake her harshly for making life sneaking around her in the shadows so fucking difficult. But by then my mood had leveled. I did not feel that throttling her was necessary when this mess was truly my mistake.

This is merely one abandoned youngster on a deserted island anyway. Who would she talk of this encounter with? I certainly had no intention of mentioning _her_ to any who might find me. So who the hell cares?

She could go ahead and tiptoe around me for a while in fear. Screw it.

She started and scrambled back until her back found the thick base of a cave column when I broke off the stare to continue eating, cutting my eyes away as if she were below my contempt. In purity, she should of been. But here I was, behaving as if the ooman had been asking to be assaulted and terrified beyond wits. It was a childish game, but I cared not.

I could hear that she was slowly trying to creep away on hands and knees, body low to the floor. I let happen, fully expecting the whelp to slink off into hiding. I was wrong.

* * *

This is the shortest chapter so far. The next one will be longer and have a lot more to it. My extra set of eyes didn't have time to scan through this one or the last for errors so it's kinda the raw material. I'll get to fixing any that are found eventually.

Here's a teaser. The next chapter will be titled "Little Demon" and I'll be working on editing that later on tonight after I'm through with housework. Tootles and thanks.


	6. Little Demon

_I could hear that she was slowly trying to creep away on hands and knees, body low to the floor. I let happen, fully expecting the whelp to slink off into hiding. I was wrong._

The pain was brief but ferocious, and then a darkness overwhelmed my senses. It had felt very much as if my sire or one of my elder sisters had struck me at the back of the head. I even awoke feeling the familiar throb, wondering what I had done to deserve such a reprimand. '_Perhaps I had upset my bearer and then my sisters had retaliated_' I thought.

… No, I was in fact lying on the cold, damp stone of the cavern floor with a heavy rock which was spattered in my blood sitting nearby. I laid there staring at it, trying to piece together what might've happened for several heartbeats. The ooman.

Fury found my heart, causing it to shudder violently and push boiling blood through every vein. The little _bitch_ had smashed my head in with a rock to subdue me. Brave but stupid as can be! Had I not already been recovering from several ails including a prior head injury, it might have only pissed me off to be bludgeoned in the head by weak prey whelp.

Having been knocked unconscious by it because I had underestimated her savagery infuriated me. I shot to my feet, ready to chase the l'ulij-bpe zabin down and skin her alive, but I saw double and flopped forward back to the moist rock in a pile. I stayed there for some time trying to decide whether the damage she had inflicted was substantial or only superficial.

Laying there like a dying sea creature out of water did nothing at all to calm my rage, but it did give me a moment to collect my senses and overcome my throbbing head. In short time I was back onto my feet and searching the caverns carefully to find the little demon. I'd put an end to her pathetic, backwards, animalistic life given to solid seconds with my talons around her scrawny neck.

I roved every inch of the cave which stunk strongly of her recent presence, I even crawled back into the deeper reaches which held the clean hot spring and her scratchings on the walls. It quickly became clear that the water world spawnling had fled the area entirely, leaving the underground system.

Although was useless, I placed my helm over my face. It was ritual, and it seemed that I'd be hunting ooman after all. I traversed the grand chamber yet again to search out her most recent trail. A younger, slightly less bright minded yautja might not have had such an easy time tracking the clever little prey but my edge was in who had taught me the ways of the hunter. Not my sire, believe it or not, my bearer provided me the foundation of knowledge.

The little monster was often careful to avoid leaving tracks, but in some stretches of the cave it was unavoidable. Silt and decaying flora debris held her foot impressions and the amount of water which filled each print told me how fresh the trail was.

Upon close inspection, it was incredible to see how damn small the ooman's feet must be. I even stamped an impression of my own foot next to one of her tracks in order to make a comparison. My foot was at least twice as long, and hers probably wasn't even half as wide as mine.

I began to feel the pangs of guilt and also foolishness. This ooman brat was a thorn in my palm without a doubt, but did I really need to kill it? She was tiny, weak, almost totally defenseless… But had managed to outsmart me in the most primitive and humiliating way possible. I paused as I followed her trail, taking a moment to sort out my conflicting thoughts and emotions.

In large part I felt ridiculous, chasing down some prey pup in order to exact silly revenge. My skull, however, still ached and the world swayed side to side. So, perhaps I'd have to figure out a just punishment for her once we were face-to-face again.

The trail went out into the dto surrounding the underground in which we dwelled. By following her trail I had learned of a new exit from the caverns, one that didn't involve emerging onto the sheer drop of an ocean facing cliff. On this cursed island though, there is always some difficulty. This exit required me to squeeze through a crack so narrow that my head nearly got stuck.

Once I had myself collected and was certain that I had not broken something new trying to get past the tight gap in the rock that led outside, I began to search out evidence to determine which direction she had scurried. Her strides had been fairly long for her puny size, so I concluded that she'd left in a full and frantic sprint after attacking me. I expected to stalk her to some secondary hideaway, as any good little vermin should know of places to bolt to an case of an emergency.

I was brought to no such place. Instead of discovering a bolt hole and the pup hiding inside, there was a disturbing change in the path that she had taken. Two troughs carved deeply into the dirt told me of how her run had come to a sudden halt, heels having dug in to bring herself to an abrupt stop.

My curiosity was set aflame! There was a new set of tracks, those belonging to some quadrupedal beast.

As I tilted my head and thought about this development a sound pierced through the heavy jungle atmosphere. It was shrill, primal, and it put ice in my veins. I had never been particularly fond of the wails of ooman kind. That is because there's something inherently chilling about a creature whose cries are pitched so high that it very nearly overwhelms all the senses.

The screaming and vaguely familiar sounds of cursing in the English language led me to the scene as it unfolded. Something very strange is happening here on this island. Neither of the species I saw before me belonged here, engaged in the age-old struggle of sentience versus apex predator.

The ooman was struggling in the deep chasm of a muddy riverbed desperately trying to outpace the monstrous beast floundering behind her in the muck. The flow of water itself was not deep. Even as short as the ooman was, it could probably wade across without much difficulty.

Once the imp reached the far bank she began clambering up the twisted and thorny trunk of a tall and sturdy type of flora. It seemed seemed to have grown right on the verge of toppling over into the riverbed.

The beast which was snapping its jaws at her was much too large and clumsy to scale the slender branches without snapping them.

In order to stay out of the way and to conceal myself I also made my way up the nearest tree. I could see much of what transpired from that higher vantage point.

The cool mud coated the ooman from the waist down and the beast was nearly entirely slathered in it. I could only see its body heat radiating from the base of its broad neck to the end of its snout. The way I figure it, this ooman had probably tumbled down into the mud choked riverbed unintentionally, then the beast fell onto the sloppy mess after her. To keep away from ferocious jaws she'd had to slog across. She now clung to the exposed roots of the tree which leaned precariously as if it might fall in on top of her.

She was scrambling to pull herself up and out of mud which threatened to suck her down deeper as the hungry beast just behind her struggled not become stuck as well.

I watched earnestly as she wrenched herself up and out of the goo. She was making quite the speedy escape without the mud to bog her down, now nearly far enough up the trunk of the tree to be free of the ravine.

Fate had other ideas and at the time I such an oblivious fool that I hadn't even the slightest clue that the next few events involving the ooman pup would reshape my destiny entirely.

She was only two branches climb from safety, but the creature in the mud was determined. It managed to drag itself up the twisted roots and make a short leap, nipping at her heels. Its jaws clamped tight around her twig of a calf. There was that awful, shrill ooman shriek again. I cringed, but kept my eyes on the struggle.

The branch gripped in her fists snapped, causing her to be dragged down through lower branches.

It is in my nature find such a scene exciting, my kind thrive on tests of survival and bloodshed after all. I felt a real thrill when the prey caught herself and managed to hang onto a stronger tree limb. The much smaller, broken branch was still held in her left fist.

She swung that stick with everything she had. Naturally, she was aiming for her attackers head. Unconsciously I rubbed my own sore lump as I continued to watch.

Again and again she lashed out, now wailing a deeper, more ferocious cry than before. It was a battle howl if ever I'd heard one. She kicked and snarled in clear agony as well, as the thing still kept its jaws tight around her leg with the intent of making her into its next meal.

Finally she began to jab her crude weapon down at it. Maybe she was lucky. The beast yowled viciously as the end of the stick took out one of the eyes, driven so deeply into the socket that when the monstrous animal let go of her leg to pull away, the stick went with it. It was wrenched from the ooman's hand and hanging out of the monster's face. She took that opportunity to scamper all the way up and over the bank.

The predator below still howled and moaned in anger as the ooman stumbled up the last few steps of the incline toward the cover of brush but she fell short onto her hands and knees. She was unable to stay on her feet, the leg was mangled no doubt.

I looked back to the animal. Ah, The ooman had better hurry to find cover, for the cycloptic terror was apparently so infuriated that it had scaled the mud slicked roots by sheer force of will. It was already snapping its jaws and clawing at the loose substrate to pull itself up the edge of the bank.

In what I can only imagine was horror and cowardice, the prey pup scrambled backward. She stumbled and fell yet again. Probably realizing that such an injury had rendered her unable to flee with any great speed, she lifted the nearest thing she could possibly use as a weapon over her head. A rock.

Was this the end for the feral youngling?

She belted out her very best imitation of roar at the monster as it hauled itself up, hind legs kicking at the tree trunk for traction. It snarled back, and the human braced herself for a fight to the death.

Again it was made clear to me that the gods must favor the unusual pup.

All of that loose soil finally gave way, the tree shivering violently as the sliding wall of mud which was once the riverbank collapsed, taking the tree and the beast will it. Only by mere inches was the human spared from the mudslide.

She didn't drop her weapon right away though; she inched toward the collapsed wall of earth and looked down over the edge. The sight of the creature half buried and impaled on the ends of branches when the tree fell onto it must've been a satisfactory indication that the immediate danger had passed. She turned, took two unsteady steps, and then collapsed much the same way she had before on our first direct encounter.

I kept watching for a few breaths so that I could be certain for myself that all of the action was over.

The animal laying dead in the ravine appeared very much like a creature from the ooman home world which hunted in packs, singing together in the night. This individual was too large, head looking very much deformed.

It was a mutated dah'oug. Why in the name of the gods was it here? Oomans, of course, must be at fault for this weirdness.

The ooman I had come to know in the underground was unconscious yet again, I could tell this even from across the chasm.

The way the tree had fallen, I was certain I could make it across without issue. The trunk of the rugged flora had created quite the functional partial bridge.

Once across and standing over the motionless form I tilted my head and thought about it. For the second time today I looked down at this tiny alien pup, wondering why the hell it did this. Much later in life I'd know the answer and also what an overprivileged _prick_ I had been. That's right, I've used ooman slang for the umpteenth time so far as I recall these events to you. Go ahead, do something about it. It's my damn memoir, so I'll write what I want to.

I digress, the ooman had an incredibly poor diet and consequently fell out often in the high noon heat.

Being a clan leader's sorry excuse for an apprentice and offspring, I simply hadn't understood. I had never actually experienced true starvation up until then on that damned island.

The more I thought about the ooman laying there at my feet, my extensive injuries, and my mysterious new ailment which caused me to feel short of breath even then, the more valuable the human was my logical mind.

Sorry as I was to admit this, even to only myself, this pewling spawn had been unintentionally feeding me for the past eight or nine day cycles.

If the little thing died now, before I had the chance to heal, I'd be completely screwed. Gods, I was reduced to a lowly scavenger.

I resolved to take it back to the cavern. I was sort of impressed with it at the moment anyway. I knelt to have a closer look at the bloodied leg on the young creature. The fangs of the unfortunate beast lying dead in the ditch had left deep punctures for sure.

I dared to slip my talons around the prey pup's ankle so that I may lift it closer to my eyes and inspect it.

She would not be rendered lame from this but she _would_ require treatment if she wanted to walk on it anytime soon.

This may very well have been my fault. Normally the creep was very careful and it did not make sense to think that she would have foolishly dashed right the jaws of a predator like that had I not intentionally frightened her.

From everything I had witnessed so far, she was too bright, alert, and focused on self-preservation to do such a thing. But these are not circumstances of the norm and although my face is no doubt handsome, to another species is probably quite a shock to behold for the first time.

I dropped the leg. I could not say that she fought well, but little pup had an instinct to thrash, struggle, and strike back against a perceived threat. My still painful head could attest to that.

The ooman remained unconscious for the entire walk back to the cavern, tossed over my shoulder like a sack of rubbish. She hardly whimpered at all when I dumped her back into the same spot on the cave floor where she had dropped for an ill-timed nap the first time. She was truly a deep sleeper, or deep into whatever this state was.

Sleeping so deeply that nothing can disturb you is usually a bad byproduct of an overly coddled childhood. It would be silly of me to assume that could have been her problem. There was certainly no one around to spoil and over protect her there and it had been that way for some time.

I was a dimwit boy, for I decided then to train little imp out of such deep sleeping, as I was too dumb to realize that passing out of consciousness was a medical issue, not behavioral.

As I fetched my kit for injuries and began working on the mildly mauled little leg, I mused on how much fun it could be to ruin her sleep for the next few weeks. I was, without equal, a spiteful brat. Enough so to plot awfulness against the child and mask the act as a favor to her.

Disgusting. The ooman's wound was all caked over with mud and the grime of the jungle. Each and every puncture or sliver of parted skin had to be thoroughly cleansed. Oh, it gets worse.

Once that wound was clean, it came to my attention that it was the _only_ patch of clean skin on this little beast! She had 90% of her body coated in… Well, I wasn't really sure what. The substance was slightly acrid to my sense of smell, and where it was dried on it took on a powdery yet fine, filmy feel between my fingertips. I had no clue what it was and couldn't ask even if I wanted to.

I began to smear a freshly mixed paste, from what I had in excess in my kit, into the wounds. It would both disinfect and seal the gashes shut to prevent further exposure to filth. Once it set it would harden like a great, dark looking scab.

There was a sudden slap and a startling new wave of pain flowed through my sore cranium. I still had her ankle gripped my right fist and it took just a few seconds to become aware that I'd been kicked right between the eyes by the uninjured foot!

The savage was wide awake now. She was screaming, clawing, and struggling with everything she could muster as I one handedly fought off her good leg. The kicks she let fly against my chest and shoulder were weak but I am fairly certain that she meant to strike at my face with these flails.

No moment too soon, I managed to capture the other ankle.

"There!" I said. "What will you do now ooman? I have you trapped!" Although I knew she could not understand my words.

As a knelt there, gripping each of her ankles in both hands, she stilled for just a moment. That challenging eye contact was made again and I growled, although she appeared more horrified of me rather than challenging. Whether she liked it or not, she needed to be still and let the dressing over her wounds set up to harden. I snorted in a sort of childish sense of victory, but much too soon.

She growled back and with reckless abandon she sought out her revenge for being accosted this way.

The ooman curled forward, reaching out with her short and grubby claws. I could not quite lean back far enough to avoid her attack with my hands busy holding her legs still.

I should simply have let go, for she had reached out, grabbing both of my lower tusks like a pair of handles and then pulled herself up much too close for my liking. For just a moment our eyes were mere inches apart.

It was all over and a second. I shouted as if I'd just been stabbed, then sprang to my feet and dropped her, not at all careful to do so gently.

I should have thrown the little monster away. She had just bitten me in the face!

I pinched my bloodied upper mandible as I watched her escape deeper into the cavern. Before leaving she turned and hissed at me, then clambered up into the passage that led to where she made her strange nest. The thing had LITERALLY hissed at me. I wasn't aware that oomans could make such aggressive gestures.

I didn't so much have the worldly experience to find humor in this, but now, I often recall my younger self simply so that I can laugh at him.

Well, at that point I was not laughing and I'd had enough of the ooman's antics for the day.

Once my moment of paralyzing shock and disgust dissipated, the ooman was already long gone into the interior of the underground system. I threw a rock angrily in the direction she'd gone anyway. I also made no effort to cram myself back into my camp, but I did climb up only to retrieve my belongings and my equipment which still required repair. I truly needed something to do or else I might follow the human and bite her back.

I was deep into failed attempts to resurrect the solar unit many hours later when I heard her creeping about once more. I turned to roar at the miniature terror but just as I twisted around to face her, something was thrown in my direction and I caught it reflexively.

The ooman snorted tersely and began to stalk passed me moodily, with shoulders hunched as she made her exit from the place.

I tilted my head as I watched her go, curious of the meaning behind such an interaction, then I looked to what I had caught my right palm. A bundle of some sort, things tied together with a frayed old piece of twine. I gave it a sniff. Meat!

It was dried and salted, cut into strips. But where did the prey whelp get the salt from? Where there are ocean shores I supposed, and there were very likely salt deposits of great quantity in this very cave.

The dawning revelation caught me off guard. The women possessed more food and the means with which to make it last than I had anticipated, but that thought passed from my mind quickly. She was now feeding me intentionally.

I felt such an unfamiliar sense of both shame and relief.


	7. Attempted Cohabitation

Hey dudes! New chapter! First though, I'd like to make an apology for all of the sentence structure errors and misspellings in the last chapter. I was pretty hammered when I edited that one. Woops. Also I'm including an index of what certain words mean here at the top. Some of them are derived from the web, others from the AVP books, and others I made up.

Ki'cte: A demand or order of some kind "That's an order!"

Ve'glek: It means tattoo, basically.

Slakk'en: Carving/painting or illustration of some sort.

C'ntlip: Booze. Described like whiskey with a burning taste.

Ooman: A mispronunciation of the English word human.

And when I say "brood Mother" I mean xeno queen.

Happy hunting my freaky readers.

* * *

A new day came and went, then another. I rationed the dried and salted meat which had been given to me, however after even a single bite of the foodstuffs I was always intensely, fiercely thirsty. It was due to the salt which preserved it.

Now, as a reminder, the ocean flows into this cave with the tides daily, causing the subterranean rivers to swell with brackish water. Most water here is no good for drinking. All but that little hot spring pool down in the chambers where the ooman dwelled were tainted with the salt of the sea.

I was thirsty enough to make the venture, but much too proud. I was a suspicious young male back then and I must admit that I still am today. Had this been a part of an elaborate trick? Did she mean to lure me down into her lair to kill me?

That was the accusation forming in my thoughts, anyway. I was to be proven wrong yet again.

With a few more hours of procrastination I found the urge to seek out drinking water overwhelming. So, I took my wary self and my parched throat down the corridor which led deeper into the chambers where that feral ooman lived.

I could go several days without a drop to drink and do just fine, but that generously salted meat had me at my limit when it came to tolerating the sensation of thirst. Upon entering the room decorated with portraits of ooman faces scratched onto the walls I scanned the area carefully. I saw no heat signatures to indicate that the ooman might be here. Just the warm glow of that glorious hot spring which bubbled with wondrous fresh water.

Like before, I knelt and dumped my face into the warm life giving liquid, drinking greedily and deep.

As I gulped down mouthful after mouthful, I thought about the ooman. I had not seen her enter the cavern since our last interaction. That had been two cycles ago when she'd tossed that bundle of food my way before storming off.

That did not necessarily mean she was not creeping about somewhere. I had slept since then and she was quite the stealthy creep, so she may have gotten by me while I slumbered.

I lifted my face only once I absolutely needed to take a breath and as always, thinking of something too deeply will surely bring it upon you.

After lifting my head shaking the excess water from my jowls I was met with two wide eyes which were practically bulging out of their sockets. It was the ooman, and she growled at me from where she stood shoulder deep in the warm waters.

I was, in truth, the one who was startled first. I snarled and surprise then she yelped in response, purposefully thrusting her hands forward against the surface of the water to assault my face with a distracting splash.

I reared back so quickly from the harmless attack that I fell backwards off of my heels and onto my ass. Meanwhile she was clambering out of the pool on the opposite side while I was busy shaking the water from my face once again.

At the precise moment I had my eyes clear of water I was under attack yet again! This time she was throwing stones and they _did_ hurt when they landed direct blows against my wounded side or my still raw thighs.

"Stop that at once! Ki'cte! KI'CTE!" I roared, and she paused, still holding up the next stone she intended to hurl at me.

I glared from where I stood, noticing now that the ooman was nude, not that I cared but I was well aware of how shy and shameful her kind were about their naked bodies. So, why had she been naked in the drinking water?

I almost retched when I realized that I had, in essence, been drinking an ooman's bathwater. I was not permitted my moment to be disgusted, the final stone was thrown with ruthless accuracy and I was left standing there with a palm clapped over a new bruise which was forming just under my right eye.

I howled angrily as she hurried off into the even deeper recesses, away from me.

I caught myself before I launched another furious pursuit. Her reaction to my appearance at such an inopportune moment was not so out of the realm of my expectations. Had she been one of my own kind, a yautja female, I have been subject to far worse punishment. It is somewhat of a crime to interrupt a child maker in the act of grooming herself.

Such a blunder like that could result in loss of limb.

I must have over looked her in the pool when I entered, either because she had been submerged or her body temperature matched that of the water. Now that she was gone I had the time to be repulsed at what I had just been drinking. I could have gagged. It was not that the water had tasted at all tainted, it was simply the idea of having drank the soup of an ooman's filth that made my guts lurch.

I spent a moment longer glaring at that pool of water; then turned my attention elsewhere for the sake of dispelling the sudden onset of nausea that I felt.

The walls in this chamber were, as you well know, decorated in scratchings and crude paintings. Most of the works were of portraits. All but one of these were other oomans or scenery that one of her kind would find familiar. I approached the wall artwork that seemed most out of place. There was one, to the far right of the largest and most prominent paintings, which appeared to be new. I could tell that this one was the latest because some of the complementary medium smeared over the carefully applied scratches was still wet. It was also only half finished; only a partial face.

It was hard to see such a thing clearly, as my way of seeing the world was very different from how any ooman painter might… Paya. _It was me_.

In the two days since I'd last seen her, the prey whelp had attempted to paint my face. I looked quite fierce in the crude depiction, so I was sort of flattered, but mostly I was unnerved by it. It was all just a little too eerie to contemplate.

Some ooman hermit painting my face on a wall, in a cave, on a deserted island. If someone had told me a season prior that _this_ was what future I had to look forward to I'd have laughed in their face.

A sound interrupted my examination of the faces on the walls. It was the ooman, she had returned to the chamber and grunted at me.

I turned to look, she has herself clothed now in the tatters she normally wore. Her clothing barely qualified as proper coverings. It wasn't that it was scant, it was that nothing she wore fit properly. She was forced wear articles that she had long outgrown, though it was hard to fathom the little runt ever having been any smaller than she already was.

I stiffened in reflex, expecting further violence from the strange savage. But nay, she had not returned to follow-up her attack with another. The pup held a tightly lidded container and then gave it a shake to indicate that the contents was that of a liquid. If it was water than it was what I'd come here in search of.

Perceptive, then again how bright do you have to be to guess that someone is thirsty after watching them drink your bathwater?

She took a step closer, holding up the container full of fluid like an offering. I was, naturally, wary of accepting such a thing from her. Could it be poisoned? Maybe, but that would defeat whatever purpose she had in choosing to share her reserves of dried food stuffs with me two days before. She could simply have tainted that bundle of salty meat if her intention was to murder me.

With great effort to try and discern the truth from her alien expression, I found no ill intent. So, I reached out to curl my talons around the container.

Although the thing appeared to be the size of a tall drinking cup in her tiny hands, it felt as petite as a c'ntlip sip server in my much larger graspers.

I was deeply confused about the lid and how I was expected to open it. I turned it over a few times, shook it as she had. Then turned it again in my hands looking for the way to undo one of the ends.

The ooman must've grown weary of watching me fumble with it. She snatched it from my hands, and with an expression on her weird face that looked none too amused, she turned the container right side up before pushing it back into my hands. Finally she pulled up the tab I'd not seen or been aware of before. Now it had a little hole to pour from.

She made her alien babble at me. I only understood fragments of it but to the best of my ability to translate what I had heard that day was... "You had better like that" Roughly, and something else about the stuff being in short supply.

A sniff first as always. Oh gods, that did not smell like water _at all_. The sent was sweet, yes, and the taste reminded me of naxa of fruit on warm days in my childhood.

"Pineapple" She said. The extract of some fruit probably. Oh, it ran down my gullet like a sip of the heavens. What a shame that the human only had a limited supply as I understood it. There was perhaps only half left after only one gulp, so I considered handing it back.

I tried, but the human seem to be refusing the gesture. I could tell that it wasn't a hospitable nature which prevented her from taking back the remainder of the beverage. She seemed rather unnerved by the container now that I've had a drink from it. Our faces were anatomically very different. I could see where that would breed hesitation about touching anything the other has had their face on. Of course that level of understanding did not stop me from whining in my native tongue about how I had already been forced to eat after _her_.

And dammit all ooman mouths are uglier than the business end of a brood mother's ovipositor! Not that I had ever seen one, my clan does not train their would be warriors on the hard meat. What my clan does to their young is another story, let us return to this one.

Time went by, the human and I spent a long while seated on opposite ends of this painted chamber. She was still far more wary than I was by this point.

There was only so much to look at as far as the ooman herself went. She sat crouched by a stalactite with one of her crude weapons, the stick, held in her lap in both fists as she scrutinized me. Any time I glanced in her direction she made the distance more comfortable for both of us and shuffled back a bit further.

I must admit that the notion of leaving that particular place was not a happy thought. It was warmer here than anywhere else on the island. I may have said so before or perhaps not, but my kind relish the heat. A fair amount of our deities are patrons of warmth and fire as a matter of fact.

I did not want to leave, the ooman though… I could not tell much about how she felt or thought of me being there. It was damn puzzling to try and decipher these creatures and their expressions. Impossible, they have no tusks to bend in a grin! Or curl and bristle in anger!

All there was to look at on her head was this weird, immobile, fleshy horn in the middle of her face. She also had stiff useless ears that also don't move. hmmm. The brows on these aliens move up and down frequently, that may be useful if I could figure out what any of those movements meant.

Understandably, my eyes wandered to something more interesting. I was looking at the artworks scrawled all over every surface in here and I was well aware that only she could have created these paintings. I decided to open my mouth and speak, asking questions I already knew the answers to, but doing so might be an easy avenue into conversation which would keep me here in this exceptionally warm haunt.

I made no attempt at her English, but when I spoke in my native tongue I made certain to motion first to the scratchings on the walls and then to her.

"Did you do this?" I asked, but it was only the sound of my voice that caught her attention. I asked again, wording my question a bit differently this time and making far more dramatic motions with my head and flexed upper mandibles.

"The slakk'en. You did all of this?" She seemed even more confused. I sighed, most oomans, save for few of their near extinct cultures, used their fingers to direct another's attention somewhere, but my kind used such things as finger-pointing as accusatory gestures. Doing so was the only way to make her understand that I was questioning her about what things she had carefully etched into the walls. It still went against the the years of scolding from my elders to point my claws anything or anyone that I had no intention of beating to a pulp, but I did so anyway. Perhaps the fatigue was taking its toll and making me delirious, desperate for some sort of interaction with another arguably intelligent creature.

Finally when she seemed to be understanding that I was curious of her work, she tilted her head and began to inch closer.

I tensed at her approach, even if she kept her stance low and submissive, it was because of the eye contact which she never dropped. It was all great deal of mixed signals to me. I could not tell if she was trying to be friendly or readying to deliver another attack.

She was within arms reach when she lifted something from the floor by the wall, something which had a vague resemblance to an edged weapon. I snarled and she froze in place momentarily, but despite my following warning hiss she moved again to reveal that she meant no ill will.

What I had perceived as a weapon was in fact a chisel. Was that a shard of volcanic glass? She had fashioned a comfortable handle for her tool as well; torn scraps of fabric tied around the end held in her palm. It was very savvy use of naturally occurring minerals.

She had her tool held fast to her latest work but had not begun to make any motions in order to start carving out new lines. I think she wanted to be sure that I understood what she intended to do.

Well, at least efforts had been made on our parts to avoid further confusion and aggression. I nodded to affirm that I understood and soon she was using me as a live muse to complete her depiction of me. It was not exactly the conversation I'd been looking for, but sitting still while she drew my countenance on the walls served as an excuse for me to stay here. I had no issue remaining in an area where there was no draft, perfect humidity, and high heat. I was a little bit too comfortable in here.

I did not realize that I had fallen into sleep until I woke alone in that chamber next to the completed slakk'en. It could be considered a fairly decent window into what most of my prey sees in their final moments. My brave and furious face was pleasant to see, but below this great work was a smaller sketch that I found myself less approving of.

"Gods. How flattering…" I muttered sarcastically. Below the slakk'en of my head and shoulders there was a much smaller illustration of my sleeping form, curled against the cave wall. That's not something anyone truly wants carved into stone. In 100 generations someone might venture to this island, see this, and think that I was much too fond of sleeping.

I glanced around to see if the ooman was still in the chamber. No, she was nowhere to be seen, but a familiar scent faintly reached my nostrils. Somewhere in the grand main chamber the ooman child was roasting meat.

How long had I been slumbering? Long enough for the human to the finish the slakk'en, an additional sketch, find prey, kill it and return to the caverns to begin charring it over a fire. I had been asleep for a full day perhaps? I had not rested even for a moment on the cycle she had attempted to lure me from hiding, so it was plausible.

I meandered groggily toward the place where she typically prepared and consumed her meals. As I expected, she was squatted by a small fire, gnawing on the badly burnt carcass of some unidentifiable creature.

I had only meant to sit nearby… No, that was a lie and she knew it too. As soon as I was within arms reach she turned her back on me with a hiss and continued eating, facing away like an animal hoarding its kill away from another.

I snorted irritably, although I knew I was imposing by sitting there waiting to scavenge or goad her out of her food. She was aware of my intentions quite clearly.

I groaned. This must be why I had been sent on a path journey. Had I always been so obviously pathetic? I had a weak spirit under extreme distress, I was totally useless.

So there I was listening to the ooman chewing and gnashing her blunt teeth into the fruit of her daily ventures, pondering my worthlessness.

I was startled out of my thoughts when something prodded at my underbelly. My natural reaction was, of course, to growl with menace. It was merely the human poking at me with the end of the stick she had burned her kill upon in order to get me to take it. There was still plenty left on the bones to pick off.

How shameful. I was allowing this prey pup to look after me.

I ate after her, yet again, and felt absolutely and irreversibly dishonored. God's, if anyone found out about this? Hell, the fact that _I_ knew what was transpiring meant that one person too many knew of it. As I sat there I even considered having the memory of all of this illegally scorched from my brain before returning home.

The ooman pup drew my attention away from my thoughts once again. She was making odd sounds and looking at me, but not aggressively in the eye for once. Her eyes were drifting everywhere else across my skin.

The imp whimpered out this anxious string of her babbling and reached forth as if meaning to touch me. I prepared a warning hiss in my throat and swiped my talons at her to tell her that she needed to back off, but she tried again, then again.

On her third try I'd had enough with her. My palm pressed flat over her entire face as I shoved her way with everything I had. She rolled in somersaults backwards, almost gracefully with the force I had used to fling her away, that is until she landed on her head.

The savage was determined, she rose to her feet and only took a moment to rub at her bruised skull. I'd seen that look in her eyes before, whatever the hell she was trying to accomplish by touching me, she was too stubborn to heed my protests.

This was going to be a problem.


End file.
